General Computer Thread

[Ar-Pharazon]

Video conversion is quite a CPU intensive task on any CPU.

Certainly sounds like it, and a different app probably won't help. We all have "the best one", don't we? I like mine in that it can do the download, convert as part of the DL, convert after the fact, plus there's a video player that will run the odd video that Windows/WMP won't. You know, the ones that show a white file type image instead of a thumbnail?

I don't remember it always being this bad though. No malware or other nonsense that I can see. I wonder if they've just changed the way it works over the years.

 

[Haggis and tatties]

Could be anything, the conversion might be set to output at too high a quality, could be a audio conversion setting, could be the hdd is quite full and running a bit slow......could be anything.
Just out of curiosity is the conversion being done on the one hdd, or is it being down from one hdd to another, i know that can impact performance issues.

 

[Amaris]

A lot of online and offline video converters are starting to charge for faster and better conversions, leaving slower, less higher quality conversions as the only remaining free option. Other apps have bundled spyware and adware, or are just bloatware. I know of several converters that have become next to useless in the past few years as they've bogged down their "free" programs with less efficient options.

 

[Random_Spock]

This is what I've used for that kind of thing: https://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html

VLC doesn't seem to hog as much space and runs pretty well.

 

[Santaman]

Video converters usually need a lot of CPU, also it depends on what features your CPU has like AVX, AVX2 etc etc.

 

[Marc]

Video converters usually need a lot of CPU, also it depends on what features your CPU has like AVX, AVX2 etc etc.

Some of them can offload to the GPU if you have a supported graphics cards (usually nVidia) but don't know how much of a difference in performance it can be and no much help on a most laptops.

 

[Santaman]

I have a Am1 APU as main machine which means it has a rather up to date graphics core, despite it being a 2.05Ghz quad core it supports all kinds of neat stuff so even this low power chip can play 4K stuff when it is encoded the right way, I assume this might go the other way around as well so this APU might be good at converting stuff because the GPU can take over.

 

[Haggis and tatties]

^^^Seems somewhat underpowered to be able to pull off 4k stuff with no issues,can i ask what is that graphics core, if i may be a nosy git.

 

[Santaman]

https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_athlon_5350_apu_and_am1_platform_review,16.html
according to this review the thing can play 4K as long it is DVXA encoded

It seems to be a Radeon R3 with 128 GCN 2.0 cores which is the reason it can decode all kinds of stuff.

 

[Amaris]

I love AMD's chips. It's why I went with an AMD CPU the first chance I could when building my current machine. I kind of like going on forums and watching these younger kids talk about how an AMD FX chip can't do this or that, all while on a system with an AMD FX chip that does that very thing without breaking a sweat.

 

[Santaman]

Yeah... i7 or bust, i9 or bust, anything besides that is totally garbage yadaydaydayda.. AMD bad! booh.. I know, that sort of crap is everywhere.. but that FX doesn't have to patched up the gills so it is safe to use, my FX 8350 setup is 6 years old now it still feels as fast as 6 years ago, software of course becomes more bloated in some cases but also multithreading has taken off quite well and it IS an 8 core chip.

I used to have the big three running next to each other, Intel, AMD and Cyrix, they all had their weaknesses and strengths, Intel was always too expensive for what they offered which became worse and worse, Pentium II's were incredibly expensive compared to K6's, at some stage I wanted to replace my P-III 450 and I had set a budget, I literally had two choices, either a Duron 800 or a Celeron which ran 733Mhz or so, a P-III 800 was nearly tripple the price of the Duron, I bought that Duron setup and never looked back, since then all Intel powered machines I got ended up here because someone else wanted to get rid of them while they bought a new machine, I stuck with AMD, the next update for my game machine probably will be a Ryzen 1600 or 2600, depends on budget and how the prices are when I update.

 

[John Clark]

I too am still quite satisfied with my FX8350, though for day to day usage, I'm using an A8-4500m and that does what I need to, though I don't generally do gaming with it.

I don't think I've had a pentium since my 233mhz.

 

[Amaris]

Yeah... i7 or bust, i9 or bust, anything besides that is totally garbage yadaydaydayda.. AMD bad! booh.. I know, that sort of crap is everywhere.. but that FX doesn't have to patched up the gills so it is safe to use, my FX 8350 setup is 6 years old now it still feels as fast as 6 years ago, software of course becomes more bloated in some cases but also multithreading has taken off quite well and it IS an 8 core chip.

I used to have the big three running next to each other, Intel, AMD and Cyrix, they all had their weaknesses and strengths, Intel was always too expensive for what they offered which became worse and worse, Pentium II's were incredibly expensive compared to K6's, at some stage I wanted to replace my P-III 450 and I had set a budget, I literally had two choices, either a Duron 800 or a Celeron which ran 733Mhz or so, a P-III 800 was nearly tripple the price of the Duron, I bought that Duron setup and never looked back, since then all Intel powered machines I got ended up here because someone else wanted to get rid of them while they bought a new machine, I stuck with AMD, the next update for my game machine probably will be a Ryzen 1600 or 2600, depends on budget and how the prices are when I update.

Ah, my K6-2. Oh how I miss it. That machine was a beast with 350mhz of raw processing power. My next PC will have a Ryzen CPU. I have no desire to pay obscene amounts of money for an Intel processor with inflated specs.

The last Intel chip I really liked was the PIII. It was a solid processor, and once the P4 came out, the prices dropped and I snapped one up. It was a great system, too.

Oh, and I miss Cyrix. They had some great chips.

I too am still quite satisfied with my FX8350, though for day to day usage, I'm using an A8-4500m and that does what I need to, though I don't generally do gaming with it.

I don't think I've had a pentium since my 233mhz.

Yep. Mine is the FX-6300. I can run VR while streaming movies to other TVs in the house, and it doesn’t break its stride.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

My self-assembled AMD Ryzen 7 1700 based PC is bloody marvellous. It was also a lot cheaper than an Intel-based equivalent.

 

[Santaman]

My next game machine will probably a Ryzen 2600 or 1600 depending on budget, my next desktop machine a Athlon 200/220/240GE or the Ryzen 2200G.

 

[Marc]

It was also a lot cheaper than an Intel-based equivalent.

and their product naming is simpler.

My mother-in-law is looking to replace her laptop and thought that the same model as the one I've just gotten the wife which is an Asus Vivo book with 15.6" display, i5-8250, 256GB SSD and 8GB ram are in short supply. Thought maybe there's a model refresh coming and so had a look to try and work out where Intel is with the chips.

Fuck me dead. More lakes than the Great Lakes and confusing as all hell as you go through laptop and desktop chips and still under the 8th generation.

Intel needs to tock off.

 

[Santaman]

I am NOT going to buy any of the current and near future Intel chips, they keep finding holes in them, spectre, meltdown, spoiler etc etc etc, you can patch (some of) those but that will make them perform like a Pentium 4...

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Minor computer annoyance. I generally use Macs but now I am needing to develop a Windows application in a VM.

In the Mac you use command button and in the VM you use control button. Going back and forth between them and having to fight back muscle memory every time you switch is a obnoxious.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Minor computer annoyance. I generally use Macs but now I am needing to develop a Windows application in a VM.

In the Mac you use command button and in the VM you use control button. Going back and forth between them and having to fight back muscle memory every time you switch is a obnoxious.

What hypervisor are you using?

 

[Unicron]

I've still had the YT problem occasionally, but less frequently. I've noticed it seems like when a skip does occur, the quality drops one level. Not sure why.

Does anyone have familiarity with StackPath? I've noticed today that while browsing I site I sometimes frequent (Listal), I'll get a prompt to verify I'm not a bot or something similar. Even if that's completed correctly, it doesn't seem to take long before I get another message blocking me from viewing stuff on the site, even though I've never had such an issue before and it's not too unlike a website like DeviantArt (where the bulk of the content is pictures or similar media). But I could be on the site for an hour or more with zero problems whatsoever, and as mentioned this is an entirely new message.

I can't imagine what I could be doing that would cause this, and I haven't noticed anything else odd. But it's rather annoying and any advice would be welcome.

Edited to add: It looks like the StackPath is causing other issues on Listal too, and has only seemed to become a problem recently. But it's not just me and it doesn't seem to be anything on my end, that I know of... I suppose that's a plus.